Lauren Savage
Lauren Savage is a senior Aerospace Engineering student at University of Texas in Arlington, as well as a licensed pilot. Two years ago, at the age of 19, Lauren began her internship with American Airlines working in the Interior Engineering Department. She has ensured that the interior of Boeing 777s is flame proof and worked with industry leaders of NASA. She was a Research Assistant at UTARI for Predictive Performance Methodologies, which specializes in researching the strengths and weaknesses of materials like polymer and metal. Lauren’s life is a culmination of flight and science.
Lauren always wanted to be a pilot. Her dream was to be accepted into the Air Force Academy, a dream she accomplished at the age of 17. In her senior year of high school, Lauren received a principal nomination, an honor that guarantees applicants a golden ticket into military service academies, from Congresswoman Kay Granger. Granger has not awarded a single principal nomination, an award she has the chance to grant annually, in 9 years.
Lauren started our interview with her cutting up fruit for her spinach smoothie, something she routinely makes for both breakfast and lunch. As she did this, she described how her childhood toys included both Barbie dolls and toy airplanes. Besides being interested in flight on Earth, Lauren shared her curiosity for space. “Space hasn’t been discovered, at all.” She laughed at what a huge understatement she'd just made. “Outside of discovering what is out there, we can use space to learn more about how to engineer better vehicles, or even more about how life works.”
One week before Lauren was supposed to leave for the Air Force Academy, her life changed. “I had written my ID in my underwear. I was so ready to go,” she recounted, her voice strained.
“I was staying the night at a friend’s house and I started to feel sick. I had horrible stomach pains. I couldn't hear anymore. I couldn’t stand up properly,” Lauren described. “At the hospital, I found out I didn’t only have Mono, but an ovarian cyst the size of an apple. The ovarian cyst had twisted over, and my spleen was swollen.”
To attend the Air Force Academy applicants must go through Basic Training, a rigorous test of willpower and strength that encompasses 8 weeks. Due to the discovery of her ovarian cyst just a week from her departure, Lauren was unable to go. “After my surgery to remove the cyst, I had medicine I had to take, but my throat was so swollen it wouldn’t go down. I could barely get out of bed.”
“We revoke your appointment,” Lauren recounted from the email sent from the Air Force Academy to her doctors and teachers. “You can reapply next year and start over.”
Panicked, Lauren began to call the colleges she had earlier turned down, colleges that had offered her full rides only months prior. “I just kept hearing, ‘Our window is closed, you missed it.’ Over and over again,” Lauren told me.
“I had a lot of people pressure for me to apply for the Air Force Academy.” Lauren shared with me. “Friend’s parents, friend’s grandparents, people I had never even met before. Two weeks after the incident I missed a call from D.C.” It was Kay Grainger, calling to offer Lauren a second principle nomination the following year. But Lauren, whose long-time dream of attending the Air Force Academy had so drastically changed, decided not to go.
After her career path seemingly turned on its head, Lauren went through what she described as “quarter-life crisis.” She put on hold pursuing a college to attend in the fall and instead got a job at the flight school where she had received her pilot’s license. “I was so drained at the time, and my mental health wasn't the best. Everything I had put in years beforehand was put into the academy.”
“I lost myself for a little while there,” Lauren said quietly.
That summer Lauren’s mom said enough. “She signed me up for school. One day she came in and said, ‘Lauren, you need to go to college. You have been accepted for the fall,’ and that was it.” Instead of attending the Air Force Academy, Lauren started school over 750 miles away from where she had expected - at the University of Texas at Arlington. Her major? Not aerospace engineering, as initially planned, but geology.
Lauren enjoyed majoring in geology, but began to feel unchallenged and missed learning about flight and space. She told me that she was still going through her “quarter-life crisis” at the time. Then one day, Lauren walked into the engineering department, “there was an airplane on the ceiling and I just sat there was like ‘Okay. This is where I want to be.’” The timing was right and she changed her major swiftly after.
Lauren quickly re-discovered her passion for aerospace engineering, and a few weeks later decided to go to a career fair. “It was my first one actually and I saw American Airlines. I walked up and talked to them for a little while and handed them my resumé. They almost didn't take it because they said I wasn’t qualified enough, but I convinced them to just keep it. Two weeks later they called me.” Everything was falling back into place.
Now that she works for American Airlines, Lauren spends a large amount of time traveling. One of the perks of working for an airline is that you can fly for free on domestic flights and only pay for taxes on international flights. A flight to Venice, Italy from New York, for example, would only cost an American Airlines employee $47. Lauren travels mostly by herself and enjoys the peace and quiet.
“I almost always feel safe. I’ve spent a lot of time in Mexico and I will travel on the public bus. I actually have this saying that ‘the third world is the best world,’ because in those countries if they see you on the street needing something they will help you.”
Lauren’s experience abroad seems incredible. “I’ve just jumped on a flight and gone to Argentina for the weekend before when school has become too stressful. I’ve explored Australia alone. I’ve actually gone to other countries to get dental work done since I don't have dental insurance. They even told me I didn’t have to pay them after it was completed, no matter how many times I offered.”
“You grow a lot when you travel alone.”
Between her job for American Airlines and her engineering classes Lauren often brings two computers to her classes. “On one computer I’m writing up projects for 777s and 787s for American and on the other, I’m solving math problems.”
In the Interior Engineering department where Lauren works, the distribution of men to women is about 50/50. “Lead engineers are mostly men, but the head of the engineering department is actually a woman. Most of the engineers are actually women under the age of 30 and I think that’s why they sent me specifically to this department rather than another one.”
“It’s completely different in my classes though,” Lauren shared. “I face a lot more of the issues that women sometimes face in engineering school rather than at work. I’ve had professors give me lower grades even if my answers are the same. I’ve had guys following me into the parking lot to my car trying to get my number. I’ve done group work with male peers to only hear them talking sexually about me later, and I have to still work with them afterward.”
Lauren described her worst experience so far: when she asked a classmate to remove his bag from a chair so that she could sit down. Instead, the classmate gestured to his lap and suggested that she just sit on him. “No other guys there said anything. They just let it happen. I wasn’t able to do anything because it was during finals. I was just too exhausted and I wasn’t going to let anything mess with my grades.”
“I would say don’t give up,” Lauren told me when I asked her what advice she would give to a woman who wanted to pursue a career in engineering. “There are so many times when there is a late night of studying and a late night of crying. Just put your head down and work. It really is such an interesting career. We all go into it for some reason, and there’s so much to learn. There is such a big future. Make female connections and find a mentor, because it’s invaluable to find a woman who went through what you are going through right now.”
“It’s not how I planned it,” Lauren said, finishing up her smoothie before getting ready for work. “And I think about what my life would be like if I had gone to the academy. But now, I can walk onto an airplane and point to things that I’ve worked on, and I think that’s pretty cool.”